Chelanga & McDougal: An Effective Partnership

It's no coincidence Liberty now has two NCAA XC titles

When then Fairleigh Dickinson University freshman Sam Chelanga entered the 2006 indoor IC4A championships in need of an NCAA championship qualifying time for the 5,000m, he knew just who to ask for help: Liberty University distance star Josh McDougal. Chelanga approached McDougal before the race in hopes that they could trade laps and share the pace, ensuring a fast time. The response shocked him: McDougal wanted no part in trading laps; instead, he guaranteed Chelanga that if he simply stayed in his hip pocket he would nail his qualifier.

It worked out perfectly. McDougal clicked off 2:46 per kilometer through 4K before unleashing a 2:33 final kilometer to cross in 13:37. Chelanga hung on to run 13:46 – good enough to qualify for the indoor NCAA meet, where he finished fourth (beating McDougal in the process).

What McDougal couldn't have foreseen then was that the selfless gesture to aid Chelanga made such an impression that when Chelanga elected to transfer following his freshman year, tiny Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., was atop the list.

Chelanga, whose demeanor is as unassuming as his slight 5-foot-7, 120-pound stature, sat out last year per NCAA transfer rules, and then burst onto the collegiate scene full of run, going undefeated this fall prior to finishing second in an epic duel to Oregon Olympian Galen Rupp at the 2008 NCAA cross country championships. Their subsequent duel was no less thrilling: At this winter's Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, AR, Rupp and Chelanga recorded the top two 5,000m marks in NCAA history (13:18.12 and 13:19.79, respectively).

Chelanga's unreal ascent to the top of the all-time collegiate distance running ranks has been as serendipitous as his journey to Liberty. For with Chelanga, you can toss all the assumptions you have about Kenyan distance-running prowess, spare one telling attribute. Chelanga did not run miles to and from school as a child – he lived but a mile from school, and he didn't run at all as a high school student. He played – no lie – ping pong, preferring that to anything more strenuous. Only when the need arose to earn a collegiate scholarship to the U. S. did running come into the picture. Chelanga's brother (enter caveat) is 2:07 marathoner Joshua Chelanga; with Joshua's encouragement Sam joined the local training group and gave running a go.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Thus did Chelanga embark on a two-year apprenticeship with the local running crew of 25 or so neighborhood runners, led by none other than world champion Paul Tergat. The result of his novitiate was a stride so fluid that it belies the fact that such efficiency was gained at tremendous cost: two years of singular devotion to a task Chelanga succinctly describes as "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

The schedule varied little from week to week and featured a steady diet of running that included a fartlek, tempo run, and 18-mile long run. Though he struggled in those two years to consistently run twice a day, as was the norm for his training partners, in due time he gained enough endurance to beat a few people on training runs that, as is customary for Kenyans, usually began slowly and finished with the runners "really clicking."

As important, though not as tangible, as the gains Chelanga made in his physical constitution were the leaps he made mentally. For though he came to the U. S. having never run a formal race, he had in two years training with Tergat's crew gained skills some American harriers fail to garner in a lifetime.

"The most important thing about Kenyans is that they like to race," Chelanga says. "Even me, I'm a racer. . . . When we train at home, we throw a lot of surges in the middle of a workout or long run or tempo run; that just gets you prepared to attack at any time, any moment, if you want to. That's how Kenyans train. I see them doing that all the time. Americans just like things smooth."

TAKING LIBERTIES

McDougal, now a Liberty graduate assistant who is running professionally, reaped the benefits of Chelanga's approach from the moment he stepped on campus. For four years McDougal had largely trained solo, without peers to challenge him as he honed his approach of running 100-145 miles a week, largely in singles, with a heavy emphasis on threshold work.

While he'd always enjoyed progressively upping the pace through his weekly 45-to 50-minute threshold session until he was really flying towards the end, Chelanga's presence allowed him to take liberties with whatever effort he had planned and push himself to theretofore unseen heights by employing tactics Chelanga regularly practiced in Kenya.